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Motor unit action potential topography and its use in motor unit number estimation
Author(s) -
Blok Joleen H.,
van Dijk Johannes P.,
Zwarts Machiel J.,
Stegeman Dick F.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
muscle and nerve
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.025
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 1097-4598
pISSN - 0148-639X
DOI - 10.1002/mus.20357
Subject(s) - motor unit , electromyography , electrodiagnosis , computer science , signal (programming language) , speech recognition , pattern recognition (psychology) , physical medicine and rehabilitation , artificial intelligence , biomedical engineering , neuroscience , psychology , medicine , cardiology , programming language
High‐density multichannel electromyography (EMG) recordings add spatial information to the temporal information content of the surface EMG (sEMG) signal. This study explores the potential value of such multichannel information at a single motor unit level, in particular for the improvement of motor unit number estimation (MUNE) techniques. It is shown that multichannel recordings make it easier to distinguish motor unit action potentials (MUAPs) and that MUAP combinations can be better resolved. Furthermore, the spatiotemporal information allows a quantitative assessment of the representativity of the mean of the recorded MUAPs in relation to the maximum CMAP, i.e., for the muscle as a whole. In general, this is practically impossible on the basis of temporal information alone. For these reasons, we expect that high‐density sEMG has the potential to address several methodological limitations of single channel surface EMG recordings. This is specifically illustrated in this study for one of the MUNE techniques in use, the F‐response method. Muscle Nerve, 2005